Monthly Archives: February 2017

My guest today is Li Song Mei. I met her through Arthur, her former teacher, who was on episodes 30 and 31 of the podcast. Li Song Mei is from a small village in Guizhou Province, China. She's currently in grad school in Beijing.

Li Song Mei is a member of the Hmong (Miao) ethnic minority group. We discussed a lot about her culture, including the largest traditional Hmong festivals. You can read more about the Sister's Rice Festival in the show notes below.

Let's listen to the show, and don't forget to subscribe on iTunes to get regular updates:

There are around five million ethnic Hmong people in the world, three million of whom are in China.

Hmong New Year traditionally takes place at the end of the harvest season, which can be any time from October to December. It's a time for family gatherings, ancestral worship and celebrating the year to come.

Li Song Mei mentioned the “lusheng” during the podcast. This is a musical instrument made from multiple bamboo pipes. Here's a short video of one being played:

Li Song Mei also talked about the significance of the butterfly in Hmong culture. This page has more information about the butterfly, as well as several other Hmong mythological creatures.

This article talks about the last native speakers of several languages. It's always sad to read about someone who has no one to talk with in their native tongue.

Microsoft's campus is indeed located in Redmond, Washington, 16 miles east of Seattle.

Finally, Li Song Mei provided the following photos and description of the Hmong rice festival. Thanks!

The Sister's Rice Festival is celebrated by the Miao (Hmong) ethnic people in southwestern China's Guizhou province, especially in the Taijiang and Jianhe counties along the banks of the Qingshui River. It is regarded as the oldest Asian Valentine's Day.

A few days before the festival, Miao (Hmong) girls collect special wild flowers and leaves in the mountains to produce natural colors to dye the glutinous rice, known as "sister's rice.” The rice is dyed blue, pink, yellow, and white to represent spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively.

Li Song Mei

Sticky rice.

At festival time, thousands of Miao (Hmong) girls and women dressed up in their spectacular embroidered clothes and silver ornamentations in a parade. Bachelorette young Miao women dressed up in their finest beautiful embroidered clothing with silver torque, headdresses with phoenix crown and hair pins.

Li Song Mei in traditional clothes.

When young men arrive, they begin to single out the women they hope to marry someday and begin to sing for them. The young women respond to their songs by giving them a drink of rice wine and the sister's rice wrapped in handkerchiefs with different symbols on them.

The long dinner table.

A pair of red chopsticks means "I love you too"; one chopstick means, "no, thank you"; a garlic or red chili indicates a flat refusal; and pine needles indicate that the boy should present silks and colorful threads and that she will wait for him. There are also many other activities, including bullfighting, horse racing, traditional Miao performances and Lusheng music.

My guest today is Morgan McKinnon. She has been living in Beijing for over four years. We talked a lot about expectations versus reality in moving to China, and some of the great and not-so-great aspects of living here. One of Morgan's many messages is that you have to keep challenging yourself. Following her own advice, she'll move to Morocco next school year, where she'll start the next chapter of her life.

There are many websites dedicated to showing pictures of funny English signs in China. Here is one of them. I would've found these signs a lot more funny before I moved to China. But now, not so much. I can read a bit of Chinese, so I can see how most of the bad translations happened. And I see these signs so often, they've become normal. “Fuck the duck until exploded” is among the many “gems” on this site that are now just “meh” to me.

At the end of our disastrous bike trip through Yunnan (read more about it here), Katie and I had one last day to spend around Dali's old town. We decided to rent a bike and pedal around nearby Erhai (洱海) Lake. Shaped like an ear (“Erhai” means “ear-shaped sea”) and at 1,972 meters (6,470 feet) above sea level, the lake is the second-largest highland lake in all of China.

We had a great day of riding along the shore, through many crowded towns full of cars trying to squeeze through narrow roads. Along the way we ate lake fish for lunch and found an interesting dragon festival in a small village. The next day we rode a train for seven hours to the big city of Kunming, from which Katie flew back to Beijing and I took another train for 33 hours. Just 'cuz.

The best part of our day at Erhai Lake: no broken chains. Here are some photos:

There were many fields like this one, with ubiquitous mountains in the background.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about my bicycle trip with Katie through Yunnan Province in China. We bought folding bikes for the Chinese New Year, loaded them with gear and took off for a two-week adventure. At least that was the plan.

While the trip was basically a disaster, we did learn some valuable lessons (or at least some of our previously-learned valuable lessons were reinforced):

Most people are good. They'll encourage you and look out for you. Especially when things are going badly. I think people can feel it when you're down on your luck, and they'll do their best to help. That's the nature of humanity.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

When things aren't working, don't be afraid to change your plans. That's how we stumbled upon the Jingpo festival, as seen in the video and photos below.

This man stuck with us all afternoon. He was 77 years old and had never met a foreigner. He spoke limited Chinese, but luckily a young man was able to translate from Jingpo to Chinese, and then I could do a rough translation from Chinese to English for Katie's benefit.

This is my continued discussion with Arthur and Xiao Ni. (To listen to my first podcast with them, click here.) Xiao Ni continued to impress me with her stories. Unfortunately, as she sojourned through Turkey and Lebanon, she was plagued by misfortune and people of ill repute. Maybe the theme for this show should be “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

If you like this show, I'd really appreciate it if you left a review on iTunes or Stitcher. This is a low-budget podcast with no advertising; reviews can be super helpful in spreading the word. Thanks for your support!

In English, we have one word for the children of your parents' siblings: Cousin. But in Chinese, they have many words, depending on which side of the family this cousin is on, whether they are male or female, and whether they are the children of your parents' older or younger siblings. Confused yet? We're just getting started! Here are some of the words for “cousin” in Chinese: 表弟 and 表哥 and 表姐 and 表妹 and 堂弟 and 堂哥 and 堂姐 and 堂妹. On top of that, if a Chinese person refers to their “brother” or “sister” in English, they often mean their cousin or their close friend.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has five elements, one of which is fire. Since moving to China, I've heard a few people talk about “too much heat.” I still don't fully understand this, but here is an explanation to get you started.

Another ancient Chinese concept is that of Yin and Yang, the opposing forces which are also complimentary. Here is some more info.

Xiao Ni used the ubiquitous Airbnb during her trip. I haven't used this service yet, but I have been using Couchsurfing since 2005. I occassionally host people in Beijing. Here is my profile. (You must be logged in to view it.)

I mentioned Palmyra, thinking that the ruins were in Lebanon. They actually were in Syria. And I use were instead of are because ISIS destroyed them. This is tragic.

My guests for the next two podcasts are Arthur and Xiao Ni. After a long career in Seattle, Arthur came to China to volunteer with the Peace Corps. Nowadays, he spends large portions of his time volunteering at a university in Guiyang, a “small city” of 3 million in Guizhou province. Xiao Ni is Arthur's former student. She didn't want her whole life to be planned for her, so after college, she decided to go on a long journey around Tibet, India, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt. All she needed was a way to pay for it.

Welcome to my humble domain! My name is Dan Perry. Once upon a time I spent 1000 days traveling in South America, and I documented my entire trip on this website. Now I live in Hong Kong with my wife Katie.

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